Month: October 2010

I just wanted to write a quick note to say I’m anxious to get started. The ideas are flowing pretty fast and furious, and I’ve already caught myself a few times jotting down a few interesting turns of phrase that I don’t want to lose between now and the First of November. Seventeen hundred words a day every day is quite a mountain to climb, so I’m going to approach it differently: A chapter a day, every day. Maybe that chapter’s a thousand words or maybe it’s three thousand. As long as I hit 50,000 in thirty days, I’ll be happy.

I strongly suspect my first two days are going to be my first and last chapters, so the book will definitely have a conclusion in place by the end of the month. The nice thing about my concept is that the plot will be episodic, so from Day Two to Day Thirty, all I’m doing is building better content based upon what I actually want to write each day, rather than worrying about where I need to be plot-wise in order to complete everything on time. Continue reading “Getting ready to go!”

I am a novel-writing neophyte. Although, i have lost a non-novel writing contest before.

Well! i have a tentative course:

A boy reclines at the base of a tree, upon the high bank of a river, ruminating within a sunlit reverie, an idyll suggestive of Huck Finn’s liberty.

“That which cannot be spoken of must be passed over in silence.” The Boy, unaccompanied on the river-bank, finds—just as Wittgenstein—there is much which must be passed over in silence. (A mode of paresthesic dream-white translucency envisaged by a Boy prostrated in stupor.)

November 1st is fast upon us, and there is one thing which I am particularly afraid of.

I love myself far too much to be a good writer.

Ok, so I may have been cheating on NaNoWriMo just a teensy bit. I have indeed written a little—but it is handwritten, very rough, and not more than a few typed pages at this point. Ian, snake in the grass that he is, took a glimpse at my first page and reamed me out for starting with the word “twilight.” So not even my first word is acceptable at this point. Thus, my disclaimer and excuses for why I am not really cheating.

But I have written a bit. And I am shocked and appalled to say, that all of the characters are so far just twisted versions of myself. I’ve got the older gay gentleman version of Liz, the younger gay gentleman version of Liz, Liz as a lesbian, Liz as a crazy lesbian, Liz as her sexy dream man, Liz as a tattooed bartender, Liz as a fucking refrigerator waking you up in the middle of the night. Continue reading “My Narcissism Reaching a Whole New Level of Shit”

Outlining. It’s supposed to be amazingly helpful, it’s supposed to help you actually write the novel (in a month or not)… and I’ve never actually done it. At all, for any story, including my win last year. But this year, I’ve finally actually buckled down to Snowflake my novel.

Sort of.

I’m definitely really liking the idea behind Snowflaking my novel, but I really don’t like the idea of actually sitting down and planning it out, scene by scene. That seems a bit too much like micromanaging, to me, haha.

I have, however, written almost 9000 words already on my novel – without writing a single word of prose. I’m expecting to hit almost 15 000 words of research/notes/planning/outlining before November 1st. Most of this planning can be found at my personal blog, though admittedly most of that is older thoughts, and half of that has changed.

Do you prefer to outline, or just fly by the seat of your pants? If you outline, what method do you use? Have you ever Snowflaked?

I’ll keep this quick because I don’t want to hamper my recovery. Friday night my iPhone Challenge was thrown into peril after i fell off my bike and sprained my hand. I can type on my phone still but certainly not to the extent that NaNo requires. Hopefully between now and Monday It will heal, if not the iPhone Challenge will be over before it started.

Our benevolent editor is using his considerable influence and clout to summon the finest hand and wrist doctors in the world from UCLA and the University of Washington Medical School (yes, I’ve researched this) to assess the situation. (Editor’s Note: I only told Ian this to make him stop crying.)

Will I recover in time? Is the iPhone Challenge over before it started? Will I become the Kirk Gibson of NaNoWriMo?

Greetings constant reader, Stoves here. Woke up this morning with a ghastly jellied feeling behind the eyes & a dwarf in my parlor! Had her dismissed by the help and then helped myself to a little brandy breakfast. Hell of a good time at the Pink Oarsman last night disposing of what little money my driver was able to loan me. Can you believe the cost of a lapdance these days? Inflation was a problem in more ways than one!

The condominium is in terrible disrepair. Trying like hell to recall who I gave the keys to before being dragged off to the pokey, although judging by the graffito on the walls and furniture they didn’t harbor a great deal of appreciation for the gesture. How the mail has piled up! Most of it unreadable documents in legalese, however none more illegible than the inappropriately large number of taunts and jibes, mostly in the form of postcards, from our ‘dear fellow’ Tasty Yumyum. I will not attempt to describe the flowery prose with which the most depraved and unholy scenarios of his demented fancy were communicated. Suffice it to say that the nude photos of my ex-wife enclosed in several of them were quite fetching—I had only to tear his image from them to make them of some use, or else scratch his face from the emulsion with a dirty fork, which was in itself gratifying. Continue reading “Stoves, from the Sky”

Editor’s Note: Though we firmly believe fiction is Stranger Than Truth, we never said there aren’t some pretty badass truths out there—like a day in the life of contributor Tim Dallimore, who lives and works in the Yukon.

I like to eat pop tarts in the morning. A few months ago I decided I was going to go all caveman on everyone’s ass, and part of that meant not ever making myself good meals. Also it included not shaving ever or cutting my hair. Anyway, I woke up and tossed a couple of pop tarts into the toaster. Then I ate a bagel with cream cheese and a bowl of fruit loops. Enough about breakfast. I eat a lot. Mostly garbage. Then me and Tom got into the burb (the Suburban truck). We drove it to the other dudes’ houses and picked them up. We all got coffee and juice from the Gas station. Then I went to Shannon’s house to get my Shan-wich.

We all went to the compound. I got my shit ready in the gear shed. That means I cut a bunch of pieces of wire and sharpened my axe. My axe needs to be sharp enough to skin a bear. I walked back into the office at the compound and got my map. It shows me where the mountains will be during my day. We drove out to the chopper pad, which happens to be pretty far away these days. So there are the five of us, driving down the Yukon highway listening to Rammstien. I usually like to listen to the Batman theme by Danny Elfman to get pumped, but I guess today was a day for Rammstien. Finally we reached the helipad. We had to roll a bunch of Jet “B” fuel out of the truck and get it ready for the chopper if he wanted to fuel up. I spent my time waiting for the chopper saying things in a British accent.

Time for the next chunk of my NaNo ’09 effort. In this part we get introduced to some new characters (the first of whom was going to play linchpin at a crucial moment in the story I didn’t even get close to reaching), and also get more from Cam & Jeromy. We’re getting close to the end now, but there is some very exciting action to come.

Hello! I’m yet another member of Toronto’s NaNoWriMo team—this is only my third year doing NaNo, and will only be my second win, but I’m already part of the Mod team, both as a chat mod and as an event mod. I really don’t know how much this is going to affect how or what I write, but I’m hoping it’ll make it a bit more well-rounded; last year, I largely kept to myself, and while I didn’t dislike it, a lot of my more interesting scene ideas this year have come from sitting in a coffeeshop. =]

I’m really looking forward to joining the team here at Stranger Than Truth—I’ve never been the most regular blogger, so I’m hoping that NaNo—and blogging with a group—will be the kick in the butt to get me in line with it. =b

I’m also going to be quite regularly tweeting about it (and all course of other things) at @Bdoing and possibly vlogging my efforts.

Tonight’s the Kick-Off party for Toronto! Do you all have your novel planned out already, or are you planning on going by the seat of your pants? Let me know! I’m interested! 😀

I’ve decided that in order to reach the 50,000 word goal I should make a schedule and strictly abide to it. Anyone who has tried NaNo before surely knows that in order to reach 50,000 you have to average 1666.66 words a day.

That kind of schedule is fine enough if you want to be the next poor starving slobbish author whose work will never see the light of day, but what if you want to write a brilliant literary classic that will make you rich and be read and adored for decades to come? What if you want to be next great author like James Joyce, Herman Melville, Kurt Vonnegut, F Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, or Vladimir Nabokov? That’s easy. What’s the one thing all these great authors had in common?…. They knew how to write a brilliant first and last sentence.